By Lonnie Wilkey
Editor, Baptist and Reflector
lwilkey@tnbaptist.org
COVID-19 has caused a lot of planned activities in 2020 to be canceled or postponed.
One of those planned events that we had to push back was a planned celebration of the 185th anniversary of the Baptist and Reflector. The B&R is the official news journal of the Tennessee Baptist Convention and is one of the longest continuously published newspapers (both secular and religious) in the country.
And, that needs to be celebrated in an era where newspapers are ceasing print publications. The New York Times reported in December 2019 that one in five newspapers have shut down over the past 15 years.
Just this year, three papers in our own Southern Baptist family of state publications have foregone print publications for online publications only — The California Southern Baptist, Arkansas Baptist News and, most recently, the Baptist Record in Mississippi. [Read more…]